Far more common but no less perilous, park workers say, are visitors who arrive with cellphones or GPS devices and little else — sometimes not even water — and find themselves in trouble. Such visitors often acknowledge that they have pushed themselves too far because they believe that in a bind, the technology can save them.

While I doubt any of us fine, beautiful, brilliant people would ever do the sorts of things in this article, we should always remember to use our technology for good without losing our critical thinking skills. Take your GPS, load up trail maps, record your progress and hikes, but always use your brain and remember that its up to you to get out of anything short of a life or death situation on your own.

Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you are up there for the night.

Be safe and have good adventures!

Red Rocks

I’m somewhat worried on what the overall effect of the luggage will be on the look of the bike, more related to balance than coolness. The SV650 is not large, and the bags kind of are. How fat will the ass be when the bags are installed?

Luckily someone did this already and posted a great overview of his install. It looks great; although the bags are somewhat large they don’t look completely out of place.

Not sure if I’ll actually go ahead with this, but I have a good place to start. Maybe this is a good project for next spring. Of course my other option is to just buy a sport tourer, but the bags cost a lot less and I don’t seem to have any real problems with comfort on long rides beyond a sore rear.